“The American Civil War was a struggle over two competing ideas of the nation-state. This struggle has never ended; it has just moved around.”

So writes Jill Lepore in “A New Americanism; Why a Nation Needs a National Story.” (Foreign Affairs, March/April 2019)

Prior to the Civil War, two ideas pitted themselves against each other. Stephen Douglas said in 1858 that the United States “was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever.”

His sparring partner, Abraham Lincoln, challenged Douglas to find a single affirmation in U.S. history that “the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence.”

The Confederates attempted to craft a new country based on ideas like those Douglas held. Though the union defeated them, the battle between competing visions of the nation still continues, according to Lepore.

The victory of the union was eventually overtaken by a kind of schizophrenic nation. One provided a new beginning for immigrants fleeing persecution and oppression and stood in contrast to segregation, Jim Crow laws, and Chinese exclusion acts.

Our current conflicts, mirrored in our views toward “the other,” are a continuation of these old battles.

I grew up a child of the South, proud of my heritage. I still cherish the kinship and unique community spirit of my childhood. Much was good. But a tough love of that place requires me to speak out against the malignancy that festered side by side with our native caring.

As a Christian leader, Jim Wallis, has written, slavery was our original sin. Until we repent, not only of the original sin but of all the insidious descendants we have refused to root out since then, I think we will fail as the nation we were meant to be.